The sybdump utility
relies on the libpipe plugin being installed on the
target Sybase server and requests the server to send (or, in
the case of −L -- receive) a dump of the
specified database via a direct network
connection.

This is,
usually, faster and more reliable than using NFS for dumping
onto storage located on another machine. The method also
allows on-the-fly processing of the data (such as
(de)compressing, (un)encrypting, etc.).

Unlike when
using a remote backup server, no server software needs to be
running on the client computer. Instead, libpipe must
be present on the server.

The first two
usages are orthogonal -- they DUMP or LOAD directly to
stdout or from stdin. The third one is different. In this
case, the data is not, actually, sent to the client
(sybdump), but is forwarded by the
sourceserver to the expecting
destinationserver. When thus invoked, sybdump
will simply report the progress messages arriving from both
servers. libpipe must be installed on both servers,
of course.

When requesting
a DUMP (first or third usage), the database will be prepared
according to Sybase’s requirements for a clean dump
loadable into a server, that, potentially, runs on a machine
of different architecture.

A just LOADed
database (second or third usage) will be automatically
brought online (thus triggering possible Sybase’s
analysis, conversion, etc.), and the sp_post_xpload
procedure will be invoked if advised by the server (such as
in cross-endian database transfer).

OPTIONS

The default value for
−U and −u is "sa" (user
to login as). The default passwords are non-existant
(NULL).

If the dumpfile
is not specified with the −f option, the usual
stdin (for LOAD) or stdout (for DUMP) is used.

[{
−j | −z }
level] option specifies compression (and level) of
the dump by either Compression Library (libz, −lz) or
library ‘‘libbz2’’ Use if you wish
sybdump to compress directly, or, when LOADing, to
hint sybload to uncompress. When LOADing seekable
files, the check for compression is done automatically, but
when stdin is the output of another command, an explicit
−z | −j (with any level number) is
currently required for decompression to function.

−t
can be specified to tell sybdump to ignore SIGINT.
This obscure feature is currently used by dumpall, to allow
the ongoing dumps to finish upon Ctrl-C.

−Ttimeout specifies the maximum time (in seconds) to
wait for the server to respond. The default value is -1
(INFTIM), which means forever. You should allow the server
at least a few minutes...

EXAMPLES
sybdumptest | gzip -9 > test.cmp

sybdump-z 9 test> test.cmp

Both of these allow to run the
(CPU-intensive) compression on the client-side, where the
CPU may be faster and/or the gzip (first example) or
Compression Library (libz, −lz) (second example) may
be assembler-optimized.

gzcat
test.cmp | sybdump −Ltest

sybloadtest< test.cmp

LOAD the database from the
previous example back into the default server.

sybdump
−SBIGBIRD125−sBERT125
RD_BACKUP RD_CURRENT

Transfer the backup of the
RD-database from server BIGBIRD125 (where it is named
RD_BACKUP) to BERT125 .